“The eurozone has fallen into a spiral of downgrades, falling economic output, rising debt and further downgrades. A recession has just started. Greece is now likely to default on most of its debts and may even have to leave the eurozone. When that happens, the spotlight will fall immediately on Portugal, and the next contagious round of downgrades will begin.”

“Greek workers erupted in fury and the government wobbled after the country’s foreign creditors demanded further budget cuts in exchange for a fresh bail-out that is needed to ward off what could be a disorderly default next month… Lucas Papademos, the Greek premier, was scrambling to shore up his coalition government after five ministers resigned in protest at the wage and pension cuts that international lenders have demanded before they will sign off on a €130bn bailout.”

“A huge amount of heavy lifting, in terms of making the numbers work, is done by the debt sustainability analysis, and specifically the assumptions it makes… where’s all this economic growth meant to be coming from, in a country suffering from massive wage deflation?… But of course even with well-below-market interest rates, Greece is still never going to pay that money back.”

[The correct answer to that question, of course, is also the reason why ASND publishes the Euro-Economic Crystal Ball Updates.]

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“… the complex 237 billion euro ($314 billion) [bailout] deal agreed Tuesday remains at immediate risk to the need to get a large commitment from private sector holders of Greek bonds to participate in a debt writedown… [and] the [IMF] has already pumped a record 20 billion euros into the country in the first bailout, without succeeding in stabilizing the country’s finances.“

[For those who don’t know, a “write-down“ is a euphemism for “the debt was cancelled and the lenders lost everything,” meaning the stockholders who own the lenders who loaned Greece all that money for all those years when they were spending more than they could repay lost every penny of it.]

[BTW, the “stockholders” of nations who loaned Greece all that money are also known as taxpayers.]

[Any of this sound familiar?]

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“Greece, Portugal, and Spain are now all officially in a recession, and France, the Netherlands, and England aren’t far behind.“

“In a country that has had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, a surge in the number of suicides in the wake of an economic crisis has shocked and gripped the Mediterranean nation – and its media – before a May 6 election. The especially grisly death of pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas, who shot himself in the head on a central Athens square because of poverty brought on by the crisis that has put millions out of work, was by far the most dramatic.”

“Greece’s new government will present ‘alarming’ data on its recession and unemployment to international debt inspectors this week, in a bid to renegotiate the terms of its bailout agreements… demonstrat[ing] that the current austerity program was counterproductive.”

“Greece’s economy shrank 6.2 percent on an annual basis in the second quarter, a slump that is expected to persist as the government scrambles to nail down billions in additional cuts to keep international bailout funds flowing.”